"Momma", the voice had said, sending chills down her tattooed spine. The room spun, her mind instantly aware of the voice's owner despite having never heard it before.

But she remained focused.

The lights went out, the bridge erupting into chaos as everyone scrambled for light sources and any way at all to regain control over their suddenly dead consoles.

But she stayed calm.

In the dark, punctuated only by beams of weak flashlight and the calls of her colleagues, the captain found her. His hand heavy on her shoulder, he ordered her back to her station. "You know that console like the back of your hand. Your can fly blind. Get us out of here."

She remembered to breath.

"Yessir."She turned to do her duty, her heart thumping in her chest, trying to remember her instrument-free training at the Academy when Feyna touched her elbow gently. She almost jumped out of her skin. Looking over at the other woman, she saw nothing but sympathy in her eyes. She knew Jo suspected what she'd heard. "I'm ok," she lied, forcing her words to be true.

The tears in her eyes told otherwise, but... still she remembered her training.

Returning finally to her console, she closed her eyes against the pitch blackness and extended her arms, her fingers tentatively touching the smooth surface of her console, searching for the right control. The lights returned, the view screen activated, and she was able to see what lay ahead. Bodies.

Wait... Bodies ?

"Dead ahead, Danann", Rome ordered. "What, into the bodies?""Is that a problem?""No... No. Just checking... "She gritted her teeth, telling herself this would make a great story next time she got together with some pilot buddies... So, she forced herself to relax.

"Momma, they're coming for us..." Her blood ran cold as the voice addressed her a second time. "Antonia... " she mouthed silently, her eyes filling with distraught tears.

But still... She held on. She could break down later, she decided, her pale, tear-soaked face taking on a look of furious determination. Right now, she reminded herself, she had a fucking ship to fly.

“I don't know what you're doing, Ensign, but if you can get us some rudimentary control of the ship, I will have Commander Danann kiss you.”

Danann smirked at the young Engineer despite the effect Lyon's choice of words had immediately had on her. Her head was screaming, her cheeks were wet with tears and her stomach was so tight she felt she was about to rupture something important. Why he thought now was the right time for a joke, she couldn't fathom. Nor, did she had the time or capacity to work it out right now.

In that moment, she just wanted to focus on the job at hand, and ignore everything else around her. Actually, all she wanted was to go hide in a bulkhead somewhere til this all blew over, but she'd settle for assisting their young, Bajoran Engineer.

Danann stared at the tricorder she was rewiring, her mind snagging on one thought repeatedly, despite her efforts to focus; She'd heard Antonia's voice calling out to her for help. Her baby daughter's words recalled to her nightmare after drunken nightmare she'd endured without rest for weeks after she'd lost the baby.

Most of that hazy period had been spent digging her way, shot after shot, to the bottom of any bottle she could find that would stay still long enough to be drained... but what she could remember, what she was focussing on now, was still torture to recall.

“Damn you, Tony...” she muttered to herself, remembering with shame and fury the messages she'd sent him, at first fighting to understand his silence in the face of their shared grief, then the confusion at his complete lack of replies, and finally her righteous anger at the apparent ease of his abandonnment of her.

“At least you got to meet her!! I have nothing to remember her by!!” she remembered slurring at the end of one particularly incoherent, drunken message. To this day, she still didn't know if he'd seen any of those comms. Part of her wanted desperately for them to be lost forever, unseen, but another part was willing him daily to watch them all, to witness what he had done to someone he had claimed to love, someone who had been willing to give up everything to settle with him on a planet (of all things...) and raise their little girl together.

She hoped, if he ever did watch them, that he'd agonise over a reply for days and once sent, that she could put him through the same torture and refuse to open the comm, refuse to reply...

She supposed, however, if the Hyperion never escaped from this mess, then the whole issue would be moot. Tony would have lost his final chance to earn her forgiveness for his complete and inexplicable cowardise... There was a certain morbid comfort to be found in that, Niamh realised.

Either way, she won; Tony Adalberto would feel like shit and only have himself to blame.

So, she continued to meticulously prepare tricorders to Maalchu's specifications in silence. If the Hyperion survived this scrape, perhaps their near-death experience would prompt some stuttering word from him, word that she would find considerable schadenfreude in ignoring completely.

The room was dimly lit, softly upholstered and small. It held a faint fragrance of perfume in the air, and the sense that it had seen better days permeated the bulkheads and ragged, basic furniture.

But neither the woman nor the man she had beckoned in here seemed to notice. Her sighs drowned out the faint pulse of the station's power conduits, his heavy breathing and occasional half-formed, slurred compliments punctuated their liaison further.

She had tried to get him undressed in here, before making it to the bedroom, but he was proving difficult to move. He had no interest in the bed, in comfort, in her pleasure. The wall would do. He had work to get back to. Didn't even bother stepping out of his pants. Why bother? He wasn't paying he rmuch, anyway.

This wasn't the plan, she fretted, but hid her worried expression in the crook of his shoulder and hoped for the best.

--

This wasn't the plan, her daughter realised, but still, she remembered her mother's words."Stay silent, sweetheart, OK? Be brave. It'll be OK. It'll work this time, I promise. I'll give you plenty of time to get his latinum. Just take it, and hide. He'll be drunk, he won't notice, sweety. You can do this..."

Nia's stomach was twisting with fear and hunger, both sensations she was wearily familiar with. Her mouth was dry and her palms were sweaty as she peeked out from behind a blanket-strewn chair and counted the number of steps between her hiding place and her mother's latest conquest.This wasn't the plan, but... they needed the latinum.

She bit her lip and advanced, her eyes fixed on the man's crumpled trousers, his pocket gaping, his latinum just visible within. Her hands were small for a 10 year old, and her light frame made her unusually nimble. She span the distance silently, as her mother watched in horror, holding off his enthusiastic advances just enough to avoid... a scene her daughter should not have to witness at that age.

Nia's fingers tipped the latinum. Almost there! She could imagine how good dinner would taste tonight! She was resolved to order a baked potato with butter... so much butter. She pinched a few slips and pulled them free of the fabric. And maybe a side of bacon, she dreamt.

His foot shifted as he lifted her mother off her feet. He was getting impatient with her coy avoidance.Niamh shifted out of the way, but the slips fell out of her sweating hands."What was that?!" he snapped, tensing and dropping the nerve-struck Dabo girl."Nothing!" she said. "Must be power reclamation. Or... or..."He looked around, pulled his clothes on and heard a jingle as the rest of his latinum tumbled from his pocket onto the slips strewn across the floor.

Niamh hadn't gotten to safety in time.To Niamh's horror, her mother suffered for her lack of stealth almost immediately. The man, as he dressed, swung drunkenly at her, sending her flying across the room. "What the fuck are you playing at!?" he bellowed. "Trying to rob me?! Holme will hear about this!" he spat, grabbed his money and stormed out.

Niamh felt hot tears of shame streaking down her cheeks as she watched her mother slowly pick herself up, dab her bloodied lip with shaking hands and hang her head."Pack your things, poppet. It's time to move again."

Niamh got to her thin legs, her hair as always, a flaming tangle of red curls. Silently sobbing, she picked up a small case, put a hand-made teddy bear in it, and looked at her mother."I'm sorry, Mamma,"Her mother stood painfully, gathered up a few basics and bent over to kiss her daughter's head. "I know, baby. I know. You did good"It was a kind lie, but it didn't make Niamh feel any better.

---

"Well, my father was in Starfleet, and his mother was too, both pilots... and really, it's just a legacy at this stage. The idea of Starfleet without a Dellany serving in it would be weird, I guess. hahaha... So, like, it was either this, or, I dunno... be a sculptor, I guess? Or a dancer of some sort? Spacial reasoning is definitely my tip top skill? You know? So, if I wasn't a pilot, I'd have to find something else to use my gift for...? I just feel like this is the place I should be right now, if you know what I mean? Like it has this essence for me that-"The dark skinned cadet babbled on and on until she was interrupted by the next cadet to her right."I grew up close to San Fran, so the Academy was my local university," he explained. "It just seemed like the right fit, and I can get home whenever I want, see my little brothers... and my Mom... It's nice."

Niamh listened silently.

"This was my safety school. I really wanted to go to the Imperial School of Engineering, but their entrance exam is hell heated up. But you know, here's nice too. Maybe things will work out for the best..." the last speaker looked at Danann. "What about you?"Niamh panicked. These people were all so confident, entitled, sure of themselves and their world. How could she tell them that it was this, or she'd likely have ended up with a facsimile of the life her mother had endured.

"I came for the free food," she stated simply. They all laughed. Oh Niamh, that's hilaaarious. The very concept of wanting and not having was so alien to them they didn't sense the truth in her statement. If anything, their obliviousness made her feel smaller than ever.

---

"Mamma, I found you somewhere to stay! In a place called France... it's nice. I checked, and even the replicator works in the apartment and everything. And I'll be able to visit, too. As long as I'm in Starfleet, we're citizens, you see, so you'll be able to go anywhere in the Federation you want." Niamh beamed out of her mother's cracked screen, her cadet uniform loose but smart on her bony body. "I've attached a document for you to sign, an application for citizenship. It's just a formality, but it's important. These people love their red tape. Make sure you add your thumb print, and I'll see you soon, OK?"Niamh blew her mother a kiss."This is gonna be good for us both, I know it. Love you Mamma."

---

The Hyperion streaked through the blackness of space at a steady Warp 5, but her pilot's mind was focussed far away from her familiar, blinking console on her comfortable bridge on her state-of-the-art starship. Sometimes it helped to remind herself of just how far she'd come.

She owed everything to Starfleet, to the Federation. She'd vowed to do whatever was required of her to ensure her mother remained safe, and content. And, she mused with some dissatisfaction, if Starfleet wanted only of her to be a glorified taxi to an overly puffed up Admiral, then she'd take that knock to her pride and do what was asked of her.

After all, she thought, remembering how it felt when that latinum slipped from her tiny hands, it could be a hell of a lot worse.